Spending money on Habbo

Gemmy_2

I went on this game when i was 13.
It was clear that you had to be a certain age to sign up (if you put your birthday so that you are under 13, it rejects you). So your daughter must have lied.

They had all these payment systems round when i was on there. I could pay by a prepaid card, credit card, phone etc and it does have a tick box for parental permission.

The meanest thing and right thing you could do to your daughter is to phone up habbo, explain whats happened and they can ban her account. She can't go on there then and have fun with all those credits

Welshwoofs

Wordwork wrote: »

The terms and conditions have obviously changed since she signed up. The only way you could buy credits then was via debit/credit card or by earning them - I know that for certain because I bought some for her in the past! The buying by phone is a new thing - over the last year or so at the most, as she hasn't been on Habbo for a while and started again just before Christmas. I suppose the lesson is to keep checking the rules because it's a moving ball game. Presumeably also the age limit has changed?

There has been the ability to pay via mobile phone for at least 5 years and home phone since the game was created back in 2001. There is a weekly limit of £30 from any single mobile phone number. The home phone line has a clear message when you ring it which states:

1. You must have the bill payer's permission, otherwise you should hang up
2. The cost of the call if you continue (and another chance to hang up)

The minimum age to register on Habbo UK was 12 and is currently in the process of being changed to 13 as it is merging with Habbo US who have to abide by COPPA regulations. If children enter a date of birth below the minimum age the registration is blocked...however there's nothing stopping children lying about their age and there is NO technology currently existing which can age verify a minor (as they have ID to be verified by).

Habbo does have alerts to unusually high spending from any one mobile or phone number and when that occurs they block the number and investigate, however it sounds as though your daughter bypassed this by spreading her activity over 4 different phones. £650 divided by 5 months and 4 phones is an average of £28 per phone, per month which would pass under the radar of spending triggers.

Again, there is no way to verify the age of someone using a mobile phone, the information that one should be 16 is there to let children know they shouldn't be doing it and the credits page states they must 'Ask for the bill payer's permission'.

If you keep pressing customer service you'll probably find that they agree to a partial refund as a goodwill gesture, however you should be aware that most online games for teens these days operate on the micro-payment model (SMS/home phone payment in addition to cards) so education of the child is crucial. I'd also suggest a bit of a talking to as there are very clear messages on Habbo and other like games about asking bill payer's permission and about how much premium phone calls will cost if they continue with the call.

Lastly, I would add that Habbo doesn't have any facility to notify you when your child makes a friend or what they type to that child. It sounds as though at some point you've installed a Net monitor which is doing that for you. I'd always recommend eBlaster which can send you daily reports of every single website your child has visited, every single conversation they've had via MSN etc as well as all the files they've downloaded and all the applications they've run.

As someone who's a specialist in child safety in Internet gaming, I'd also add that I would never recommend that anyone aged 12 is ever allowed on the Internet unsupervised.

vyle

£650? On virtual tat? Christ, I furnished most of my (REAL) flat for just over £700.

I thought Habbo had been killed by a certain anonymous website years ago, though. I'm surprised it's still going.

The unfortunate thing about this, however, is if your daughter has been spending yours and other peoples' money without permission, it's theft. She stole the money, it isn't habbo's fault.

Welshwoofs

vyle wrote: »

£650? On virtual tat? Christ, I furnished most of my (REAL) flat for just over £700.

I thought Habbo had been killed by a certain anonymous website years ago, though. I'm surprised it's still going.

It's got over 120 million accounts and is the biggest virtual world for teens on the Net. Yes, it's still going.

vyle

Welshwoofs wrote: »

It's got over 120 million accounts and is the biggest virtual world for teens on the Net. Yes, it's still going.

I guess the pool isn't closed any more then

mjgreen60

Wordwork wrote: »

Hope someone can offer some help or advice as to what to do next - I have confiscated her computer and her mobile for now, but that isn't really a long term solution.

I accept that children may need a mobile, but make it PAYG and then you can monitor how much she uses, not contract (assuming that is what she is on). However, why does a 12 year old need their own laptop?? First one I had was when I went to university, at 19!!

Think the best first step would be to sell the laptop to try and recoup some of your money. Would also teach her a lesson and prevent her from wasting any more money of these sites! I realise this isn't a complete solution to your problem, and I do really sympathise, but I don't get why she needs her own laptop, and it's a chance to get some of your money back.

Wordwork

Well I contacted Trading Standards and they say that any refund would almost certainly be just a goodwill gesture. However, they told me to write to Habbo via recorded delivery, explaining the situation and pointing out that my daughter is too young to "have the capacity to contract" and that buying Habbo credits would not be classed as a "necessary contract", which might encourage them to cough up some of the money. If not, they basically said forget it. So I've done that and we will see what results, if anything.

Interestingly, to find a UK mailing address I had to go onto the US site, and on that site it clearly states that you are only allowed 7 SMS a week to buy credits and gives a daily spending limit - both of which my daughter has managed to exceed. On occasion she has sent 10 texts a DAY from a single phone! I couldn't find anything similar stating specific spending levels on the UK site.

As for Habbo monitoring spending levels, as noted by Welshwoofs, the money my daughter spent was spread over several phones, but not equally or over the whole period - she obviously had phases of buying credits then stopping. Her maximum spend on any one phone (mine incidentally) was £29, over the course of less than half an hour (the texts seem to come in at pretty much the same time in bunches of 4 or 6) which personally I think is a bit high not to have triggered an alarm. It would be interesting to know what Habbo UK's limits actually are - although not for any practical reason as I have also requested that my daugher be banned forever from all Habbo sites worldwide... and given them my IP address so she can't just start up a new account.

I would agree that a child of her age should not have access to the internet unsupervised and her computer is set up in the same room as the one that I'm on all the time (I work at home). However, she has obviously has been getting up in the middle of the night when I'm asleep to buy these credits.

Wordwork

mjgreen60 wrote: »

I accept that children may need a mobile, but make it PAYG and then you can monitor how much she uses, not contract (assuming that is what she is on). However, why does a 12 year old need their own laptop?? First one I had was when I went to university, at 19!!

Think the best first step would be to sell the laptop to try and recoup some of your money. Would also teach her a lesson and prevent her from wasting any more money of these sites! I realise this isn't a complete solution to your problem, and I do really sympathise, but I don't get why she needs her own laptop, and it's a chance to get some of your money back.

Unfortunately it's not her laptop - it's mine! It's the one I use only when I have to go and work on site, so often sitting idle and I said she could use it when I was at home to keep in contact with her friends. I should explain here that I have cut her some slack over the last year - we had been living in France, where she was very happy, but her father died very suddenly and unexpectedly just over a year ago so we had to move back to the UK so I could earn some money to pay off debts and earn our keep. She really didn't want to leave France, and since many of her friends are back there she kept in touch with them via Habbo - cheaper than the phone, I thought!!! Now she is totally banned from Habbo (hopefully), and I can't risk giving her the computer to Skype, I'll have to find some other way she can stay in touch.

Wordwork

Welshwoofs wrote: »

Lastly, I would add that Habbo doesn't have any facility to notify you when your child makes a friend or what they type to that child. It sounds as though at some point you've installed a Net monitor which is doing that for you. I'd always recommend eBlaster which can send you daily reports of every single website your child has visited, every single conversation they've had via MSN etc as well as all the files they've downloaded and all the applications they've run.

Does eblaster work on a Mac? If so, I'll certainly have a go at installing it.

Owain_Moneysaver

vyle wrote: »

The unfortunate thing about this, however, is if your daughter has been spending yours and other peoples' money without permission, it's theft. She stole the money, it isn't habbo's fault.

However, if it is theft, then Habbo can have no legal title to the money and must hand it back.